November 2006 Archives

28 November 2006

Maybe Bob Newhart could run the offense?

Shoop to call offensive plays for Raiders (Associated Press)

The Oakland Raiders replaced offensive coordinator Tom Walsh on Tuesday, promoting tight ends coach John Shoop to take charge of the team's struggling offense.

Walsh is a close friend of coach Art Shell, having served as his offensive coordinator during Shell's first stint as Raiders coach. But Walsh had been out of the NFL since being fired with Shell after the 1994 season and was the recipient of much of the blame for the NFL's worst offense.

Walsh's previous jobs as a bed and breakfast operator and mayor of Swan Valley, Idaho, made him the butt of jokes during the team's struggles. But Shell stood by Walsh despite all the criticisms, including those from players.

Actually, his previous jobs didn't make him the butt of jokes so much as that butt of an offense (not to mention the lifeless Art Shell).

This is really too bad. I was looking forward to seeing the Bed and Breakfast Offense this weekend against the Texans!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/28/06 23:29 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (0)

I bet he plays a mean guitar too!

Country singer admits killing caged bear, calling it wild (Associated Press)

Troy Lee Gentry pleaded guilty Monday to a misdemeanor charge of falsely registering a captive bear as being killed in the wild.

Under the plea, the 39-year-old country singer agreed to pay a $15,000 fine, give up hunting, fishing and trapping in Minnesota for five years, and forfeit both the bear's hide and the bow he used to shoot the animal in 2004. The bear, named "Cubby," was killed in a 3-acre private enclosure.

The guy seems to be as stupid as he looks. No small feat!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/28/06 22:40 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)

26 November 2006

Big 12 Wrap: Week 13

A limited Week 13 of action in the Big 12 had only one real surprise, but it was a biggie. Off to the games:

Oklahoma 27, Oklahoma State 21
Oklahoma completes an improbable run to eke out a Big 12 South championship, and against a pesky OSU team that always gives them trouble. Go ahead and give Bob Stoops that Big 12 coach of the year trophy.

Texas A&M 12, Texas 7
Coach Fran saves his job, as the Longhorns' late-season tailspin ends their Big 12 Championship hopes.

Nebraska 37, Colorado 14
Nebraska gets a nice tuneup before what could be one of the most competitive Big 12 title games in years.

Missouri 42, Kansas 17
Missou ends a three-game losing streak that put a damper on the season after a strong start.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/26/06 21:55 | Big 12 Football | Technorati | Comments (11)

25 November 2006

Shrinking Pawhuska

Pawhuska's sole traffic signal no longer is a "real" traffic signal.

Instead, it's flashing red every direction, and the city has put up stop signs.

Every time I come back here for some reason, it's always kind of sad to see what businesses are missing in the shrinking town. But the sole traffic signal being relegated to flashing red... that's really unfortunate.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/25/06 07:45 | Other | Technorati | Comments (3)

24 November 2006

Review of Income and Wealth by Alan Reynolds (Diana Furchgott-Roth, NY Post)

Money Myths (Diana Furchgott-Roth, NY Post)

Most measures of inequality look at income before taxes and transfer payments. Transfers include housing vouchers, Medicaid, food stamps and refundable tax credits. But our progressive tax system is designed to redistribute income from high-earners to those without income - and it works. The top half of earners pays about 96 percent of all taxes. So when taxes and transfer payments are included in the calculation, there is a smaller difference between the assets of rich and poor. Funds are taken from the rich in the form of taxes and given to the poor in transfer payments.

Inequality is reduced further when it is measured by how much people spend. After all, as Reynolds demonstrates, inequality "is still a round-about and short-term way of measuring differences in living standards," and living standards depend on per-person spending. Contrary to popular belief, people are more equal in terms of consumption today than they were in 1986.

Eh, in discussions of poverty and wealth creation, facts don't matter so much as feelings to most people.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/24/06 10:08 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

Review of Enemies by Bill Gertz (Joseph C. Goulden, Washington Times)

Failures of intelligence, the leaking of our secrets (Joseph C. Goulden, Washington Times)

In a sense, Bill Gertz is sui generis among Washington reporters who write about national security affairs. For one thing, he does not rely upon for-background-only whispers from anonymous sources. Most of what he writes, as Washington Times readers have come to appreciate, is supported by documentary proof. Further, Mr. Gertz eschews becoming buddy-buddy with his sources on the social circuit in Georgetown and elsewhere. Instead, he is more apt to kick the stuffing out of persons about whom he writes.

Mr. Gertz also has the knack of mustering cold, driving rage about the situations he covers -- a rage that fortunately he saves for books such as "Enemies," rather than venting in his objective newspaper reporting. His disgust is well summarized in the subtitle. And even someone who is reflexively friendly towards intelligence and law enforcement agencies must feel appalled at Mr. Gertz's account of sweeping incompetence by the men and women who are paid good salaries to protect important secrets.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/24/06 09:54 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

Review of Richard Hofstadter by David Brown (James Neuchterlein, Commentary)

Middle Man (James Neuchterlein, Commentary)

As a historian, Hofstadter broke with the prevailing Progressive tradition, represented most notably by Charles Beard, that saw the story of America as an ongoing conflict between ideological heroes and villains: the people versus the interests, democrats versus aristocrats, the underprivileged versus the wealthy. In Hofstadter’s view, this account was vastly oversimplified, ignoring, among other things, the socio-cultural divisions—ethnicity and religion in particular—that modified and complicated class relations.

[snip]

When Hofstadter widened his lens to encompass American political pathologies on the Right—as in Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963), which won him a second Pulitzer, and The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965)—he came in for not dissimilar criticism from conservatives. In Hofstadter’s universe, wrote William F. Buckley, Jr., Left-liberals were analyzed, but radical conservatives were diagnosed. Whether the rebukes came from the Left or from the Right, there was something to them: the bounds of Hofstadter’s own pluralism were located within the New Deal consensus, excluding those outside it from serious consideration.

What really united Hofstadter’s critiques of the Left and the Right was a suspicion of the popular mind. Not to put too fine a point on it, he was something of an intellectual snob. The masses—and mass movements—were not to be trusted. For such older dichotomies as the people versus the interests, the historian David Potter would later observe, Hofstadter tended to substitute the equally misleading dichotomy of the rational versus the irrational. It is not surprising that his greatest political hero was Adlai Stevenson, who to intellectuals of the 1950’s seemed the very model of political rationality.

Some contemporary progressive intellectuals have managed to retain Hofstadter's snobbery, if not the power of his analysis.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/24/06 09:48 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

Reviews of Moral Minority by Brooke Allen

God of Our Fathers (George Will, NY Times)

Not since the medieval church baptized, as it were, Aristotle as some sort of early — very early — church father has there been an intellectual hijacking as audacious as the attempt to present America’s principal founders as devout Christians. Such an attempt is now in high gear among people who argue that the founders were kindred spirits with today’s evangelicals, and that they founded a “Christian nation.”

This irritates Brooke Allen, an author and critic who has distilled her annoyance into “Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers.” It is a wonderfully high-spirited and informative polemic that, as polemics often do, occasionally goes too far. Her thesis is that the six most important founders — Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton — subscribed, in different ways, to the watery and undemanding Enlightenment faith called deism. That doctrine appealed to rationalists by being explanatory but not inciting: it made the universe intelligible without arousing dangerous zeal.

It's more helpful to understanding American political thought and American constitutionalism to look at the broader "political class" than simply looking at six people.

Faith of Our Fathers (Michael Novak & Jana Novak, NRO)

George Will is a very civilized man, and Brooke Allen, by all accounts from our friends, is a courteous and highly cultivated woman. Between them, they have generated another round of argument about the religion of the American Founders. We hope soon to have the pleasure of reading Allen’s new book, Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers, having only read her article in The Nation. What both writers say about the religion of six Founders (Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Adams, Hamilton, and Washington) is within the bounds of 20th-century conventional wisdom.

Just the same, the 18th century was so very much more religious than our own that historians of the last hundred years, far more secular in education, have developed a project of their own, which is (to appropriate George Will’s words) “an intellectual hijacking” itself — one every bit “as audacious as the attempt to present America’s principal Founders as devout [read “evangelical”] Christians.” They want to show that these six principals were “skeptics,” at best Deists, certainly not real Christians, and that they privately held quite different religious views from those they displayed in public.

It's an interesting (and even Straussian) point that some contemporary historians may not be understanding the 18th century political class as those people understood themselves.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/24/06 09:35 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

23 November 2006

Happy Turkey Day!

Another Turkey Day is upon us.

As usual, I'm thankful to be surrounded by loved ones -- and all those great food smells that are starting to waft about. The Joel Osteen church of South Beach will not be pleased with me by the end of this day!

I'm also thankful that my hiking in the Ouachitas yesterday didn't get me shot by any drunken deer hunters, although we did see signs of hunters everywhere. I'm sure they appreciated us scaring off all the wildlife as we rustled through trails full of fallen leaves. Ah well -- go lease private hunting land if you don't want to share the national forests with us Leave No Trace types. :)

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/23/06 10:29 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)

21 November 2006

Enjoy your holiday

Posting will be slow around here through Thanksgiving, as I get in a little hiking before the annual pigout.

Here's wishing everyone a great Thanksgiving!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/21/06 10:24 | Other | Technorati | Comments (4)

19 November 2006

Big 12 Wrap: Week 12

It was a week of limited action in the Big 12, with a couple of surprises. Here are the games.

Oklahoma 36, Baylor 10
The Sooner defense dominated again, giving up 140 total yards and -48 yards passing. The Sooner offense rambled along pretty well also, despite a starter at running back who was fourth on the depth chart earlier this season. If not for five Sooner turnovers, this blowout would have really been a blowout.

Texas Tech 30, Oklahoma State 24
OSU raced out to a 17-0 lead, but no lead is ever safe against Mike Leach's offense. Better try to keep scoring when you have a lead!

Iowa State 21, Missouri 16
Missouri has fallen on hard times since starting the season well. Losing to the worst team in the north definitely qualifies as hard times.

Kansas 39, Kansas State 20
A week after beating last year's national champs, Kansas State loses to a bad Jawhawks team in the Kansas Bowl. These two teams had a combined TEN turnovers in this stinker! Peeewww.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/19/06 21:16 | Big 12 Football | Technorati | Comments (1)

18 November 2006

Self-Help Pop Psychology - The Board Game!

I get a kick out of local self-help and nutrition guru Joel Osteen.

What he does isn't much about theology or religion, but lots of people seem to find his positive self-help hucksterism helpful.

And his marketing is top-notch.

I mean, really, how many self-help hucksters OR quasi-religious figures have a BOARD GAME?

That's awesome.

I like this guy's reaction (maybe because it sounded like something I would write):

I wonder what happens if you lose the game. Obviously the winner gets to have his or her best life right now, but if you lose.....I guess it's your best life at some point in the future if you ever win a game. It must be depressing if you lose at "Your Best Life Now". Gosh, what would happen if a heated argument arose from playing said board game? You would not be living your best life at that particular moment.

Heh. Excellent.

UPDATE (11-19-2006): This "review" of the game is even better! And the comments... oh my!

BLOGVERSATION: Mike McGuff.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/18/06 10:50 | Other | Technorati | Comments (0)

17 November 2006

Sudden acceleration update!

Vehicle smashes into grocery store, killing shopper (KTRK-13 news)

A woman is struck and killed while shopping, when a vehicle slammed in the Kroger grocery store.

The accident happened at the store on Highway 6 in Missouri City shortly before 2pm. According to police, a woman who was driving through the parking lot lost control of her car, slamming into the front entrance of the store. She reportedly says the brakes failed.

One woman inside the store was injured. She was taken a nearby hospital, where she died. The victim's name has not been released.

The driver has not been charged. A police investigation is underway. A store surveillance camera reportedly captured the scene, but does not provide a great deal of detail.

Hmm, here's a thought -- the driver mistakenly hit the gas intead of the brake?

This driver was smarter than some, though. Never admit anything. Just claim Sudden Acceleration Syndrome.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/17/06 17:58 | Other | Technorati | Comments (0)

Nurse-In sounds better than my name for it

Nursing mom files complaint against airlines (Emily Bazar and Sam Hemingway, USA TODAY)

A clash between a nursing mother and a flight attendant has sparked a discrimination complaint, an airline investigation and a grass-roots protest.

Emily Gillette, her husband, Brad; and their then 22-month-old daughter, River, were removed from an Oct. 13 flight from Burlington, Vt., to New York after a flight attendant asked Gillette to cover up while she was breast-feeding the girl.

Freedom Airlines operated the Delta Air Lines flight.

Gillette, 27, filed a complaint against both airlines last week with the Vermont Human Rights Commission alleging that the airlineviolated a state law that allows women to breast-feed "in any place of public accommodation." The airlines have until Nov. 27 to respond, Gillette's attorney, Elizabeth Boepple, says.

In a show of support, about 30 mothers and fathers and dozens of children staged a "nurse-in" protest at Burlington International Airport on Wednesday.

Another Boobiethon! Excellent!

Seriously, what was that flight attendant thinking?

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/17/06 16:58 | Other | Technorati | Comments (4)

16 November 2006

Clueless sports hack

AP poll voter removed after mistakingly thinking OU lost (AP)

A voter for The Associated Press college football poll was removed from the poll board Wednesday because he mistakenly thought Oklahoma had lost to Texas Tech and voted the Sooners lower in this week's rankings.

Jim Kleinpeter of The Times-Picayune of New Orleans said he was in the press box at the Alabama-LSU game and was told the Sooners had lost to Texas Tech. OU rallied from a 14-point deficit to beat Texas Tech 34-24.

Because he believed the Sooners (8-2, 5-1) had lost, Kleinpeter said he dropped Oklahoma from 15th to 24th on his ballot.

[snip]

"It was my fault. I probably had other avenues I could have gone to get the score, but I usually rely on the morning paper here in Baton Rouge. And for some reason, they didn't have the score," he said.

Why yes, it was your fault!

Sadly, there are probably plenty of voters in these polls who don't really have much more of a clue about how they're voting any given week.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/16/06 22:48 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (3)

From the "bizarre sports news" files

'Mattress Mac' makes unusual ultimatum to UNT (AP)

A booster's unusual ultimatum has placed the University of North Texas in an awkward position: Rename its new athletic facility after the football coach that was just fired or have the donor's $1 million gift redirected to the music department.

To keep the peace, and perhaps keep open the big-money pipeline, school officials say they will honor the odd request from Houston furniture magnate Jim McIngvale -- known locally as "Mattress Mack" for his goofy TV and radio spots. A school spokeswoman cited the school naming policy, which states that a facility "may be named in keeping with the wishes of the donor."

Thus, the McIngvale Practice Facility will get renamed for Darrell Dickey, who was fired last week. No timeline for the renaming is set.

It was either rename it, McIngvale said, or redirect his money to the acclaimed One O'Clock Lab Band, the showpiece at one of the country's top music schools. Mattress Mack was serious enough to take out a one-page ad Sunday in the Denton Record-Chronicle explaining his demand.

"Right's right and wrong's wrong. It's the right thing to do," McIngvale said. "I don't think firing a guy three weeks after he had a heart attack was the right thing to do, either. Even Wall Street is not that callous."

It's sort of an odd demand, since the story later admits that the money was donated several years ago and has already been spent.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/16/06 20:57 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (0)

14 November 2006

Clueless

OU Football Notebook (Scott Wright, Daily Oklahoman)

The instant replay system was dealt another weird twist involving the Oregon Ducks on Saturday night.

Down 28-3 to USC, Oregon backup quarterback Brady Leaf threw an apparent touchdown to Jonathan Stewart.

The play was reviewed in the booth, and the TD was overturned because the replay official ruled Stewart had stepped out of bounds before catching the ball inbounds.

Oregon coach Mike Bellotti then challenged the review call. After a second review, the replay ruling was overturned and the touchdown counted.

The second review found that the ball had been tipped after Stewart had stepped out and back in, making him eligible to catch the ball.

Dave Parry, the Big Ten supervisor of officials who helped the conference develop instant replay, said he was surprised to hear about the challenge of a reviewed call.

"That's the first time I've ever heard of it," Parry told CBS' Sportsline.com. "You're fortunate the score was lopsided. If it was 28-27, there'd be a lot of talk."

That's just bizarre. How can anyone have any confidence in Pac 10 officiating after its replay follies this season?

I thought replay would be a good thing, but for the most part, it's just served to slow down the college game. And when the replay officials screw up as often as they seem to screw up, it doesn't seem like the delays are worth it.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/14/06 09:09 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (2)

12 November 2006

Big 12 Wrap: Week 11

The Big 12 continues to sort itself out, as one team clinched its Big 12 title game appearance this week, and one team saw its remote BCS title repeat chances go away, among other excitement. Here are the games:

Kansas State 45, Texas 42
The state of Kansas is not a very friendly place for Mack Brown of late! Two years ago, a bad call saved Texas from a loss at Kansas. This year, Ron Prince's Kansas State squad ravaged a Texas defense that is having a lot of trouble of late. The upset ends UT's remote hopes for a repeat appearance in the BCS title game. And K-State's improvement over the course of the season makes my early assessment look kind of silly.

Oklahoma 34, Texas Tech 24
It took a few games (resulting in tough losses to Texas and Oregon), but the Sooner defense is now everything it was advertised to be at the start of the season. This one should have been a much easier one for the Sooners, but four turnovers actually put the game in jeopardy before the Sooners took control in the second half. Freshman running back Chris Brown stepped in for an injured Allen Patrick and ran well. Malcolm Kelly was lights out at receiver.

Nebraska 28, Texas A&M 27
Can Coach Fran win a big game? I thought he had this one, but not quite. Meanwhile, Nebraska clinched the Big 12 North with its victory and will be heading to the Big 12 title game.

Oklahoma State 66, Baylor 24
Who saw THAT coming?

Colorado 33, Iowa State 16
Coach Mac got his walking papers earlier in the week, and then his team got whacked by a bad Colorado team. Ugh.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/12/06 21:26 | Big 12 Football | Technorati | Comments (2)

Review of One Party Country by Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten (Ari Pinkus, CSM)

The Republican Party: an incredible knack for winning (Ari Pinkus, Christian Science Monitor)

Written by two investigative reporters for the Los Angeles Times, Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, this book shows the signs of incisive journalistic digging. Early on, a minihistory lesson shows how the Republicans seized the opportunities for electoral success afforded by redistricting, particularly in the South.

More recently, the Republican Party has shown that it is well on its way to flawlessly executing the technique of microtargeting - developing messages and reaching specific individuals who are most likely to vote for a candidate. A new approach to conducting campaigns, it puts the onus on campaign staffs to learn about voters, including those who have not turned out in the past.

The authors extensively discuss the Voter Vault, a database of names, voter registrations, positions on key issues, and marketing information that can help the GOP reach new voters.

With this under-the-radar model, the Republicans would take the Democrats by surprise, the authors say.

This book review was posted at the end of October, and obviously feels dated now. While the title may be overblown, the efficient, professional apparatus put in place by Mehlman and company is still formidable, and to the extent the book gets the details right, it ought to be an informative read.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/12/06 20:59 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

Reviews of London: City of Disappearances by Iain Sinclair

Disappearances can be deceptive (Peter Ackroyd, Times)

IT IS A CITY THAT forgets. It is a city of the forgotten. You can still disappear without trace in London. It calls to those whose one desire is to vanish. Here you can, in the old phrase, “go under”. Here you can “break”. The city is built upon lost things. It is constructed in a literal sense on the ruins and debris of the past; it towers above forgotten underground rivers and discarded tunnels. It is built upon old graveyards and burial pits.

So the past is rarely visible in London. The city devours its former incarnations, leaving not a wrack or wraith behind. It buries its dead, and forgets where they lie. That is the source of its strength and its power. The living will in any case soon enough pass into darkness. The city itself will always rise again. It will be renewed when those who read these words have utterly disappeared and been forgotten.

Iain Sinclair has compiled what he calls an “anthology of absence”. There are stories of the outcast and the vagrant, the victims of an oppression that they themselves cannot define.

London's dreams are still thick with fog (Sinclair McKay, Telegraph)

Londoners are used to vanishings, and not just through Blitz or Great Fire. The city is restless, ceaselessly self-regenerative. First the buildings go: from Tudor palaces to council tower blocks. Then the people go: old cockney dockers, flat-capped, disappear from nicotine-stained boozers, which in turn transform into oak-floored organic bars. The spirit of the old districts changes too: Bethnal Green's former atmosphere of claustrophobia and barely suppressed violence has slowly transformed into something younger, more tolerant.

In this hugely enjoyable anthology, a wide range of writers consider, in prose and poetry, in fiction and in occasionally hilarious autobiography, that which is no longer there.

The book sounds really interesting, in spite of the prose of the first review.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/12/06 20:42 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

11 November 2006

Two years

As time has passed, I've missed these.

Not as much as I miss Dear Abby Is Full Of Crap, but close.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/11/06 21:49 | Other | Technorati | Comments (1)

10 November 2006

A different kind of shelter

A while back, I posted about trying to find a lightweight one-person backpacking tent that suited my admittedly picky requirements.

I didn't really come up with anything I liked better than the old solo tent I already had (which is in pretty bad shape, and probably not stormworthy at this point).

Poking around on the lightweight backpacking sites, though, led me in a slightly different direction -- to hammocks!

I never really gave hammocks much attention in the past, because they seemed more like a backyard luxury item than a durable backpacking shelter. But so many lightweight backpackers now swear by them that I decided it was time to give 'em a closer look.

My Hennessy Hammock arrived earlier this week, and I set it up over in a nearby park to give it a test (I think there were some envious homeless people!). It seems like a pretty sweet shelter (replete with rainfly and mosquito netting). Even better, the model I have weighs just under 3 pounds. That's roughly a five pound savings over the traditional tent shelter setup (factoring in the tent, poles, ground cloth, and sleeping pad). Dropping five pounds is significant.

I'm looking forward to giving the thing a true test in the woods later this weekend and into next week.

UPDATE (11-11-2006) I think I'm postponing my hiking until next weekend, weather permitting. The Veterans' Day festivities ran a little longer than I thought they would, and were a little more important than tromping around in the woods.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/10/06 14:25 | Outdoors | Technorati | Comments (3)

09 November 2006

Gotta love the run-on headline

Longhorns are young but talented Barnes has ultra-talented freshman class at his disposal (Joseph Duarte, Houston Chronicle)

The No. 21 Longhorns begin the season tonight against Alcorn State with a lineup that will feature at least three freshmen and may be the youngest in the nation.

All the NCAA football execs (because it IS big biz) tell us we can't have a real playoff, because it would cut into academics and keep the kids out of class and all that phony nonsense.

Yet we have NCAA basketball starting two weeks before Thanksgiving. It will continue through March. The student-athletes will play both during the week and on the weekends. It seems to me that it will cut into academics and keep the kids out of class and such.

So why can't we have some sort of football playoff again?

(Incidentally, who WRITES those awful headlines for Chron.com? They have been trending from horrid to worse of late).

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/09/06 20:18 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (8)

07 November 2006

Big 12 Wrap: Week 10

No (belated) wrap from me this week, just a placeholder link to the week's games.

I wasn't in Chicago to watch football!

That said, I did watch most of Oklahoma's big victory over Texas A&M. That was some boring offensive football, but those two defenses were really impressive. Bob Stoops deserves a lot of credit for the work he's done, given the various setbacks this season. And Dennis Franchione will have those exciting victories over the Citadel and Army powerhouses at least!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/07/06 20:09 | Big 12 Football | Technorati | Comments (1)

No election blogging here

American democracy will get renewed and all, and it surely won't need yet another liveblogger to help it along.

Instead, I think some Rockets basketball and Dr. House are on tap for the evening.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/07/06 18:16 | Other | Technorati | Comments (0)

06 November 2006

This is not world class

I'm back in town just in time for a flurry of last-minute campaign ads, calls, and mailings.

I keep getting emails from Jim Henley, the scary man pictured above (from a Houston Press article) who will lose badly tomorrow to Rep. John Culberson. Here is his latest:

Democratic Challenger in Congressional District 7, Jim Henley, will drive his campaign school bus throughout CD7 stopping at eight different polling locations on Election Day. The Henley for Congress bus will start at the northern end, near SH 249 and FM 1960 of the district at 6:45am and complete its trip in Meyerland around 6pm.

I hope he doesn't plan on trying unduly to influence the political process by peeing and politicking in those locations. We're on to that game, and won't put up with it!

When I was in Chicago, I saw a great political ad that was blasting some schmuck for his ties to the mob. It was definitely world class. This stuff just doesn't compare.

But it's still good to be home. It's much warmer.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/06/06 22:28 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (9)

03 November 2006

Skipping outta town

I'm skipping outta town for a few days, to Chicago.

I should be around the internet some, so do email if you really need to for some reason.

Try not to miss me too much *laugh* (especially you obsessive cyberstalker types). And have a good weekend!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/03/06 10:57 | Announcements | Technorati | Comments (1)

Comment on In Defense of Negativity by John Geer (Andrew Ferguson, New York Sun)

Attacking voters (Andrew Ferguson, New York Sun)

There's a saying among political consultants popularized by the Republican ad man Mike Murphy: The difference between a positive ad and a negative ad is that the negative ad has a fact in it.

This bit of folk wisdom has recently found academic support. In an original and thoroughly refreshing book published early this year, "In Defense of Negativity," the Vanderbilt University political scientist John Geer undertook a definitive survey of negative advertising.

The poor man viewed almost every presidential-campaign television commercial aired since 1964, positive and negative alike, and arrived at an unexpected conclusion: The negative ads were better.

Being an academic, Mr. Geer had to define "better" with some precision. He had four criteria to distinguish good ads from bad. The best ads discuss pertinent political issues, have a relatively high degree of specificity, rely on documentation to make their point, and raise questions that the public itself considers important.

By each measure, the negative ads scored higher than the positive ads.

If they can work in a bit of humor, even better. The best political ad I've seen/heard in ages is Rick Perry's Chris "Mr. Way too liberal for Texas guy" Bell ad that's a takeoff on the Bud commercials. It's a "negative" ad, to be sure, but it effectively uses humor to reinforce points about Bell that have been made previously.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/03/06 10:09 | Books/Culture | Technorati | Comments (0)

01 November 2006

Some kind of poll

Red-light cameras record thousands of violations (KPRC-2 News)

Statistics show that 96 percent of Americans fear being struck by a red-light runner.

The other 4 percent wish they could have been on Jackass.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/01/06 23:42 | Other | Technorati | Comments (3)

Sensible. Common-Sense. Common Sense. Got it?

Corrections (Houston Chronicle)

State Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston

[snip]

2. Abortion: Instead of infringing upon the rights of women by reversing Roe v. Wade, I favor a sensible plan that is targeted toward the goal of having zero abortions in the state of Texas. This plan includes support for common-sense sexual education programs in schools that will reduce the number of teenage pregnancies. In addition, I strongly support family planning programs that will reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. For far too long, ideology has taken precedence before common sense.

Think her communications consultant told her to emphasize "sense?"

Farrar sounds like one of those phonies who would try to call herself pro-life after all those contortions. Whatever.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/01/06 23:15 | Texas | Technorati | Comments (1)

Do they know it's chilly in Chicago?

Janitors take protests on road: Union taking its message to other cities (L.M Sixel & Alexis Grant, Houston Chronicle)

In an effort to gain support for their cause here, Houston janitors are traveling to other cities to picket buildings served by their employers.

The Service Employees International Union said during a conference call Tuesday that Houston janitors would begin picketing Halloween night in the Chicago area.

That'll surely help build support here.

I hope they're still picketing when I'm in Chicago this weekend, though. That would be great for the Flickr page.

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/01/06 22:43 | Houston | Technorati | Comments (2)

Closing in on UH basketball

I got my UH basketball season tickets in the mail today.

The season opener is still a few weeks away.

That's a big improvement on last year, when Maggard and crew had to send out the tickets overnight via DHL for whatever reason, and they arrived the day before the home opener.

This looks to be Penders' deepest and most talented team yet. An NCAA bid is not an unrealistic expectation for this season. I'm ready to get the season started. And I'm especially ready to enjoy those fifth-row, mid-court seats. Go Coogs!

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/01/06 21:59 | Sports | Technorati | Comments (1)

Misinterpret?

A statement from John Kerry (JohnKerry.com)

I sincerely regret that my words were misinterpreted to wrongly imply anything negative about those in uniform, and I personally apologize to any service member, family member, or American who was offended.

The problem wasn't that any words were misinterpreted. They weren't, thanks to our wonderful digital age and plenty of recordings of the comments.

The problem was the words themselves, properly interpreted. They were offensive, not to mention erroneous.

Ah well, it gave me an excuse to break out that great photo from Halloween 2004. :)

Posted by Kevin Whited @ 11/01/06 19:38 | American Politics | Technorati | Comments (0)

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